fmtv made... different?

FMTV Conversions
oh well.

Huh??? I don't get it.

Try this one:

http://badboytrucks.com/index.htm

379 GRAND!!!!!!ARE THEY DRUNK
You could buy a whold fleet of vintage MV's for that.
You could buy a salvage deuce, a brand new FTV cab, upgrade the tires, trim, etc., and build you own for far less than that.
It doesn't even have a crew cab.
That reminds me of the International CXT. Nice to look at but far too rich for my blood.
There is no doubt in my mind that some poser will buy one as an example of conspicious consumption. Think Arnold and his Hummer.

I don't consider the FMTV to be one of the Army's finest hour things. Since they were bought in relativly recent days with history and lethality being what it is they did not have protection for the crew or critical components built in. So now we have a truck with very reduced capacity with increased crew survivability. That is good for Soldiers in one way but the entire drivetrain and fuel systems are almost completly exposed and can be damaged by very minor enemy effort. In the First Cav we as loggies had a saying since we supported so many tanks back then with so few support vehicles, ( a tank out of fuel is a heavy radio and a tank out of ammo is a moving target) needless to say the Armor guys did not want either of these options. When an FMTV is stopped by a rifle round to the engine or transmission our guys are stopped in some very unfriendly neighborhoods. It is time to develop a fully protected support vehicle and wreckerman you may have the idea just kit one together and send it to Aberdeen for testing. Our Soldiers deserve the best I pray for our truckers several times a day because the lifelines must continue to operate and they are driving the trucks that keep it operational.

God bless,

Its good to hear from a fellow CAV TROOPER! FRIST TEAM

jasonjc said:

Its good to hear from a fellow CAV TROOPER! FRIST TEAM

Click to expand...

Who is the FRIST TEAM? Never heard that one before!

the 1st CAV DIV

Rumor around the "campfire" is...

Badboy Trucks was not completely honest in telling S&S they're intended uses for the trucks they purchased were, and that S&S has suspended ALL commercial sales of their FMTV's....After dealing with the KOOKS!

The source of this info is VERY good!

If true, its a true shame!

What is really a shame is seeing a 5 ton FMTV with an armor cab on it's nose with the duals in the air because the truck can not be driven safely as an armored bobtail. That severly hampers my convoy ops since a bobtail is always a part of the trail party. We need a re-think of the whole program and it is not even that old. The 900 series trucks which are still in service beat them hands down in my book.

Talking with a friend of mine, he says that the FMTV's do well up until something breaks theny they're dead dead dead.
Few small problems, big problems are a show stopper. Loose the electrics the truck doesn't run. Loose the hydraulics, the truck doesn't run, etc.

On deuces, you can have lots of little fiddly problems that are a pain to fix/diagnose but the truck keeps running through those issues. Loose the electrics, you can make it work. It'll get you home, it may not be happy about it but it will run. Not quite the case with the FMTVs.

FMTV's opinion piece

Getting "modernized" with the FMTV's - once you get them all up-armored to make the rounds in the sandbox, they're so overloaded they are bound to break. Plus, what was once a 5-ton MTV is now a 2-1/2 ton truck....if that. Don't they remind you of a generic cab-forward Isuzu moving van anyway?

Oh well, should've done anotherr PIP on the M35 and 800 series trucks.....as well as the 900 trucks. Put Cummins turbos in those things, or whatever fave diesel you can think of, power steering, allison trans....oh wait, isn't that an M35A3?

older was better.....

i emailed them a pic of my badboy truck off roading bet it dos'nt make it to the photo album

good to see so many brother Troopers here. FIRST TEAM AIR CAV!!!!

ARMYMAN30YearsPlus said:

...Since they were bought in relativly recent days with history and lethality being what it is they did not have protection for the crew or critical components built in. So now we have a truck with very reduced capacity with increased crew survivability. ...but the entire drivetrain and fuel systems are almost completly exposed and can be damaged by very minor enemy effort. In the First Cav we as loggies had a saying since ...When an FMTV is stopped by a rifle round to the engine or transmission ...

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i'm going to have to strongly disagree. not sure when you were there, but we (3ID) replaced 1 CAV in early '05. that's when we first were supplied w/ the LSAC cabs. the kits fully replaced the cab but also protected the fuel tank as well as battery box. for the entire year, the FMTV family was the only series of vehicle that we did not have a fatality in (which includes the M1114, M1075, and M1070). most of our LogPaks consisted of fuel and M1075s. most of our heavy gun trucks were M1083s. so all of the fuel were run w/ M1088s.

most every one of our 1088s were involved in an IED and ALL of our 1083s were involved in either an IED or a VBIED (vehicle born...). so, we came out w/ a completely different perspective: the LSAC cabs and the FMTV is a very protective vechicle.

no, we could not run an empty 1088 on a convoy, but we were so restricted on the ratio of vehicles to guntrucks that we would not have done it anyway.

yes, when an FMTV is down is can be a nightmare if you are unfamiliar w/ them. but once you get to know the tricks you can hang pretty good. i know, i was a shop officer for 2 years. and when they are running (which IS more often than not), they are hands down the best performer that the military has ever seen. they'll run better than any deuce or 900 series either on road or off.

no, they don't offer the simplicity of a deuce. but i'd own one if i could (but that's 'cause i know how to work on one )

Re: FMTV's opinion piece

Adamlee said:

Getting "modernized" with the FMTV's - once you get them all up-armored to make the rounds in the sandbox, they're so overloaded they are bound to break....

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yeah, i remember picking up bobtails loaded w/ 5k gal fuel tankers left and right w/ my 984 during the invasion. i kept picking them up for injector pumps, transfer pumps, toasted trannies, overheating, and a couple of lost crank pulleys. man, those things just don't hold up to pulling a load across the sand. oh, but i was talking about the M939s that i picked up along the MSR. what were you refering to?

Adamlee said:

...older was better...

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trust me, an 800 or 900 WILL NOT perform like a 5 ton MTV. period. even maintenance for maintenance, i'd take an FMTV over an 8 or 900 anyday.

to be fair, during the invasion across the border, i did have to pull a couple of MTVs - for relays or solenoids, nothing mechanical. but that's 2 MTVs, 6 x 900, 3 x 800, and 1 x 1075.

in 5 years in a non-div DS maintenance Co, i had not seen one single [legitimately] worn out engine, tranny, transfer, or axle in any MTV series. seriously.

RE: Re: FMTV

I know that the up-armored cabs both the LSAC and SIMULA did a great job in protecting our Soldiers and having been there twice as you said I am only saying that the FMTV should have been designed with the armor in place from the GITGO. By 2005 most of our FMTV fleet on the Iraqi roads had the armor in place. We also have a very mature maintainance structure in place now.

Early in the war and in the first Gulf War we had Soldiers shot through the sheet metal. I expected the new techology to hold up better than in some cases 30 year old trucks and your points bear this out but the Up Armor was an afterthought as though no one expected us loggies to come under any fire and now we face as much as the Infantry.

The other thing that the first Gulf War did what you mention is deploy many vehicles that were not in the best of condition through the years of maintainance deferral that many units suffered. That combined with the extreem dust in Saudia Arabia that they operated in for months before going into Iraq caused problems too.

The new trucks are so new that I do not expect many to go down and I really do not expect them to be junk I just think they could have been better designed to protect Soldiers and the key components in the truck off the assembly line. The simularity to a European cab truck on the orginal FMTV is so full of glass it looks like we are going on a picnic not a war.

Re: RE: Re: FMTV

ARMYMAN30YearsPlus said:

...I am only saying that the FMTV should have been designed with the armor in place from the GITGO. By 2005 most of our FMTV fleet on the Iraqi roads had the armor in place. We also have a very mature maintainance structure in place now. ...but the Up Armor was an afterthought as though no one expected us loggies to come under any fire and now we face as much as the Infantry....

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i understand your point more now - the FMTV would have much more capable and better if it were designed as an armored vehicle from the beginning. yes, that is true. but what wouldn't have been??

the fact of the matter is that we've never spec'd our log and support vehicles to be armored, because (as you point out) we've never needed the protection of them until now. i've heard very similar descriptions say that Iraq is close to "Vietnam in an urban setting." i don't think anyone expected it to turn out this way.

you are right, i believe that a large majority of support vehicles will continue to be armored even after Iraq. but i do believe that we have about a 95% solution with the LSAC cabs on the MTVs (as well as the HEMMT/PLS, HET and M915 armor systems, too). i think very little vehicle capacity is truely lost with this design and, therefore, mission capability remains at about the same level. anything more and (you're right) it would take a complete redesign and i'm not sure anyone wants to spend the money on that anytime soon.

example: M1078 (2.5T) w/ LSAC. yes, the actual payload has decreased because of the additional weight added. but the mission of the LMTV is probably about 98% troop carrier, and it can still do that job just fine. i can count the number of times on a single hand that i've ever seen an LMTV "loaded."

i think instead we will have a larger selection of vehicles w/ varying armor levels to choose from to accomplish the task with given conditions. i'm sure we'll see a completely new "gun truck" for convoy escort missions to replace the M1114 in the near future. and that wouldn't be a bad thing IMHO.

but, in my opinion, we'll probably see the FMTVs in both armored and unarmored configurations for a long time to come.